The Economic Naturalist - Why Economics Explains Almost Everything by Robert H Frank

Author:Robert H Frank
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2011-06-29T16:00:00+00:00

Why do bureaucrats favour the passive voice? (Alfred Kahn)

Alfred Kahn, a former economics professor at Cornell University, was tapped in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter to become chairman of the US Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB). The CAB, now defunct, was the agency that regulated fares and routes in the civil aviation industry. Kahn’s charge was to deregulate that industry and put the agency out of business. On arriving at his job, he was surprised to discover that most of the regulatory orders issued by the CAB’s legal staff were almost incomprehensible. Passages like these were common:

The holder [of a CAB certificate] may continue to serve regularly any point named herein through the airport last regularly used by the holder to serve such point prior to the effective date of the certificate. Upon compliance with such procedures relating thereto as may be prescribed by the Board, the holder may, in addition to the services hereinabove expressly prescribed, regularly serve a point named herein through any airport convenient thereto.

Kahn’s first memo to his legal staff announced that he would reject any document that was not written in plain English. ‘Read your documents to your spouses and children,’ he told them, ‘and if they laugh, you need to rewrite.’ But why were these documents so difficult to understand in the first place?

A regulator’s task is to regulate people. This generally entails telling them they cannot do what they want. Most people do not take pleasure in frustrating the wishes of others. It is understandable that bureaucrats might wish to downplay their own roles in the process. Rather than say, ‘I forbid United Airlines to fly between San Diego and San Antonio,’ for example, regulators might find it more comfortable to say something like, ‘It has been determined not to be in the public interest that United Airlines continue to provide air transportation services between San Diego and San Antonio.’

Kahn’s edict was widely publicised at the time and drew worldwide applause from fans of clear language. In its wake CAB documents quickly became clearer and more concise.

Did the new mode of communication persist? With most CAB lawyers having long since dispersed to other jobs, no one really knows. But there is reason to suspect that the plain-English mode is not a stable equilibrium among bureaucrats. If plain English became the norm, it would then be in the interests of any one bureaucrat to move ever so slightly in the direction of vagueness, thereby to diminish the visibility of his or her responsibility for restricting other people’s behaviour. Too big a shift would risk a reprimand, but a slight shift would attract little notice. As other bureaucrats then responded to the same incentive, the standards of vagueness would begin to shift. It is easy to see how, through a gradual, step-by-step process, the result might again be thoroughly unintelligible bureaucratic language. Such language probably would persist until another forceful leader emerged to demand greater clarity.

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